Thursday, January 12, 2012
Legislature After Deal to Spare a Few Democrats, House Redistricting Plan Rolls
Posted by Jeff Woods on Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 3:16 PM
Republicans agreed to accommodate Democrats, redrawing district lines to help three incumbents keep their seats. In return, they asked Democrats to go along with speeding the plan through the House this week. And one more thing: they demanded that either House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh or his top lieutenant, Mike Turner, vote for the plan.
“I thought it was worth doing that to save a couple of our members,” Turner said a few minutes ago after the House voted 67-25 for the plan. “We discussed this back and forth, which one of us was going to do it. We did rock-paper-scissors, and I lost.”
Turner speculated that House leaders wanted to embarrass one of their adversaries for putting Republicans through so much hassle over redistricting.
“It was a little punitive maybe,” he said. “There was some discussion pretty hot and heavy. There were actually some pretty colorful words. One night it really got blown up pretty bad. There were some things said. Maybe they felt like they had to have something back. Maybe they wanted to hit one of us.”
The plan, which originally endangered the careers of at least nine Democrats, now gives new life to three of them: Reps. Sherry Jones of Nashville, Eddie Bass of Pulaski, and Harry Tindell of Knoxville. Jones, who had been tossed into Rep. Mike Stewart’s East Nashville district, is redrawn into one of her own. Bass no longer is shoved into a Republican incumbent’s district, and Tindell’s district also is made more to his liking.
Democrats said they will decide later whether to go to court to try to overturn the plan for under-representing blacks. Tennessee's black population grew by 127,000 people between 2000 and 2010. Yet the Republican plan keeps 13 majority-minority districts, the same as before. Democrats contend the plan should have added two more.
Fitzhugh also complained about the secrecy and speed of the process. The plan, hatched behind closed doors, was whisked through the House only nine days after it was made public.
“We understand to the victor goes the spoils,” he said. “And we understand this is an inside baseball process that probably people in this building care more about than people across the state do. But the problem that we have with it was that the people across the state didn’t have the opportunity to care about it because it was pretty much a closed deal until the very end. It just didn’t have the transparency that things in Tennessee state government ought to have. But we did not have the votes and we knew that, so we just made the best of the situation.”
The House also adopted the congressional redistricting plan. The Senate takes up redistricting tomorrow.
Comments (8)
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So Turner admits this was more about keeping "members" than representing the people of Tennessee. Interesting.
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Oh, please, Moost, spare us that phoney b.s.
Turner (who is the Democratic leader, after all) made a move to assist his Democratic members. Gasp! How horrible and nefarious that is!!! But would you expect less from the Republican leader?
There is no idiotic hypocritical double standard that you guys cannot rationalize.
The best way to protect the best interests of the people of Tennessee is to try and get more Democrats into the General Assembly. You know, maybe they'll actually try and accomplish something other than threatening to stomp mudholes into imaginary threats that might appear in a public restroom.
Thanks Mike and Craig for standing up as long as you could for the people of TN. In time, the people of Tn will wake up and see what the GOP has done to TN and its people.
Bring on more Republicans and rid of us the plague of hypocritical Democrats. They have no principles, only a desire to stay in power and produce as many non-productive, government dependent Democratic voters as possible.
I couldn't have said it better myself Davidlongfellow! They are a plague! In fact, that kind of plague is far worse than any of the ten plagues from the Old Testament! Libtards and Dumbocrats are the absolute scourge of society and must be stopped at all costs!!!!!
How memories either fade or go into denial. Every ten years for the past century the party that controlled redistricting had two names--gerry and mander. And, when it was a very public process, it was an in-your-face strong arm sort of way. Sorry Perry, but I agree with Moost. Turner just confirmed that gerrymandering is still all this is about with the ex-majority party.
Speaker Naifeh would never have made such an agreement even if he had a
much thinner margin than presently exist. This agreement gives away 2 or 3
seats yet still gets just as much complaining from the minority party and press
as would have Speaker Harwell stuck with the original plan. Very timid leadership!
